After Bengal chief secretary & home secretary, EC replaces DGP, Kolkata CP | India News

New Delhi/Kolkata: A day after replacing the Bengal Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary (Home) with its own choice, the EC on Monday replaced the DGP and Kolkata Police Commissioner among others. Hours after announcing the schedule for Bengal’s assembly polls along with three other states and a UT, the poll panel late on Sunday removed Bengal Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty, replacing her with 1993-batch IAS officer Dushyant Nariyala. Principal Secretary (Home) Jagdish Prasad Meena was replaced with 1997-batch IAS officer Sanghamitra Ghosh. Chakraborty took over as Secretary General on January 1 and was the first woman appointed to the post at the World Bank. She was also the first woman Home Secretary of the state. This is the first time WB’s top bureaucrat has changed before the elections. On Monday, the EC ordered another reshuffle, removing DGP Piyush Pandey and replacing him with 1992-batch IPS officer Siddha Nath Gupta. Kolkata Police Commissioner Supratim Sarkar was replaced by Ajay Kumar Nanda, a 1996 batch IPS officer. The EC’s overriding power to transfer officials directly engaged in conducting elections comes from Article 324 of the Constitution, which places the entire electoral machinery in an election-conducting state or UT under its “supervision, direction and control”. The 2021 Assembly and 2024 LS elections in Bengal have also identified DGPs and senior officials as “very close to the party in office”.

“CEC Gyanesh Kumar assured the EC presser on Sunday that elections in Bengal would be violence-free and peaceful. Pursuant to this objective, the EC has appointed/transferred senior police officials, including DGP and Kolkata Police Commissioner,” an EC official told TOI. More transfers are indicated at the district level in the coming days in consultation with Bengal Special Observer NK Mishra.Also changing the important posts of ADG and IGP (Law and Order) – to ensure judicious deployment of security forces for election security besides a direct role in preventing political clashes and violence – the Election Commission has replaced incumbent Vineet Goyal with 1995-batch IPS officer Ajay Mukund Ranade. Natarajan Ramesh Babu, a 1991-batch IPS officer, was ordered posted as DG Correctional Services. The EC in its order clarified that these officials have been barred from all activities related to the Bengal elections. Changes to the police system during election season are not unprecedented. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the commission replaced Anuj Sharma as Kolkata Police Commissioner with Rajesh Kumar. Since the 2016 assembly elections, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has restored the transferred officers to their previous posts after the elections.